Jillian sat down with personal finance superstar Suze Orman for an exclusive, candid chat about her life's ups and downs, her achievements, and her new book, 'The Money Class.'

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Suze Orman has been called many things: an uber brand, a pop culture icon, a New York Times best-selling author, an Emmy award winner, one of Forbes magazine's most powerful women in America, one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world, Oprah's money guru, America's money lady, and the list goes on. For me personally, she embodies all those things, but most importantly I am proud to call her a trusted friend and mentor.

It's for this reason that as I assumed my new role as "inspiration editor" for EverydayHealth.com, Suze was my first call. Every month I'll be doing interviews with some of the most … well … inspiring people in the world, and I knew that Suze would provide me with brilliant information while still being patient and tolerant enough to be my very first "celebrity" interview.

And so we begin on a Friday evening. She's just flown back to her home in Florida after wrapping up an exhilarating speaking engagement where she brought more than 600 inner-city teens to their feet in uproarious applause. This is the tail end of her book tour for her latest best seller, The Money Class. I presumed she'd be exhausted due to her breakneck schedule, but I was wrong!

In typical Suze fashion it begins with a smack-down. "Jillian, as your mentor I need to stress that whenever you are doing an interview and you are recording somebody you should get them on tape giving you permission to record." So without hesitation I ask, "Suze, do I have your permission to record?" "You most certainly do. Okay, go on, sweetheart," she replies. And now we are off to the races.

A little history lesson: I remember watching TV late one night and coming across one of Suze's PBS specials. This is when she hooked me. She told a compelling tale about how she went from rags to riches that left me feeling like I myself could conquer the world. So in case you missed it, this is where we begin…

Jillian Michaels: We have come to accept you as America's money guru, but that wasn't always the case. With so many feeling lost in life, can you share with us the path that led you to your true calling?

Suze Orman: That question can be answered in so many ways. But here is the story I think you are after. I went to the University of Illinois from 1969-1973, and after four years I decided I was going to strike out and see the world. I borrowed $1,500 from my brother Bobby and bought a used Ford Econoline van. I drove out to Berkeley, Calif., where I lived in that van on the streets for about four months. I didn't have enough money to pay for the first and last months' rent for an apartment until I landed my dream job as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery. I worked there from the age of 23 to 30. So for seven years I worked for $400 a month as a waitress until I got this brainstorm that I could open my own restaurant.

I asked my parents for $20,000 and they didn't have that kind of money to give to me. I went to work the next day and Fred Hasbrook, one of the people I had waited on for seven years, came into the bakery and asked me, "What's wrong, Sunshine? You don't look happy." I told him the story. To make a long story short, all the people that I had been waiting on for all those years rallied together and gave me $50,000 to open up my own restaurant. I didn't know what to do with that money and they told me to go down and put it in a money market account with Merrill Lynch and let it sit there until I learned what to do to open up a restaurant.

Again to make a long story short the broker who took that money ended up trading it in one of the most speculative strategies around — the options market — and within three months lost all $50,000. I didn't know what to do so I thought, well, I can be a broker, they just make you a broker. So I went and I interviewed for a job at Merrill Lynch because I knew that I would never be able to pay back that $50,000 making $400 a month. They didn't have any women working for Merrill Lynch in the Oakland office at that time as stockbrokers, so when I ended up in the manager's office, this is what he said to me "Suze, women belong barefoot and pregnant. I will hire you, but you will be out of here in six months." So I asked him how much he was going to pay me to make me pregnant. When he said $1,500 a month, I said, I'll take it — and before you knew it I was learning how to be a stockbroker. To this day I think they hired me to fill their women's quota, but regardless I was on my way.

As I was studying to be a stockbroker I read what was known as the "you're your customer rule," which essentially stated that you could not risk a client's money if they could not afford to lose it. So in essence, what Randy, the stockbroker who lost all my money, did was illegal, because I couldn't afford to lose that money, so he shouldn't have risked it. When I told the manager that I thought Randy was a crook, he said, "That crook makes us a lot of money, so go and sit down and say nothing. Just keep studying, Suze."

At that point I thought, well, he told me he was going to fire me in six months anyway and at this point I was four months into it, so I decided that while I may still be relatively young and have time to pay back the money, what if this had happened to my mother or my grandmother? I did the only thing I knew to do. It would be easy to sit there and say nothing, but it would not have been right. So I ended up suing Merrill Lynch while I worked for them. Here is the great part: Because I sued them they could not fire me — who knew? By the time the case was to go to court I was their No. 6-producing broker in the Oakland office, and right around that time a new manager came in, looked at the case, settled out of court, and gave me back the $50,000 plus interest. I was able to pay everybody else back, and that is how I got my start in the business of investing.

JM: I love this story so much because you took a major setback and turned it into an opportunity. Your dream of opening your own restaurant was shattered and additionally you were now $50,000 dollars in debt. This scenario would have devastated most people, and yet you accepted the intervention of fate, found meaning in it, learned from it and subsequently the woman you are today was born. How would you advise someone who is suffering a major failure or setback to not give up and fall apart? How does one "turn lemons into lemonade"?

SO: You have to understand every "no" leads you that much closer to a "yes." When one door closes another door opens. A great teacher once taught me that you've got to have faith that everything happens for the best. I have had many setbacks in my career and every setback has led me that much further into my truth. After a few years of being a stockbroker, in 1987 I opened up my own firm and had another major setback where one of my employees ripped off all my money. It closed me down for a year or two and I ended up $250,000 in debt.

That situation turned out to be the greatest thing that every happened to me because that's where I learned to stand in my truth. That's where I learned that the truth will always lead you to a better place and a bigger place. And every single setback, every single one, has led me — not in my time, but in the time that it was meant to happen — to a place that I never in a million years could have imagined that I could go or become. So the greatest advice I could give you is the lesson I was taught: that you'd better have faith that everything happens for the best. Nothing happens in your life that isn't something that you are meant to learn to get you where you need to go so you can become who you are meant to be. And that meant-to-be might be someone you don't even know exists at this moment in time.

JM: This brings me to my next question. You mention 30 years in this business. In that time you have written many best-selling books on money. Why another book on money? Why The Money Class? Why now? What makes this book different?

SO: I really thought in 2007 when I wrote Women and Money that it would be my last major book on finance. Maybe I would write a book on my journey, my memoir so to speak, but as for finance that would be that. And then 2008 happened and 2009 and 2010 and I knew during those three years that the world of money had changed and it was very probable that it would never change back to how it was before. And that the advice I had given before was not advice I would give now. The dream of owning a home turned into a dream of getting out of a home because people were now upside-down in their homes and all they wanted to do was to rent an apartment and be free. The dream of having one's dream job turned into "Oh my God, I'll take any job. I've been out of work for two years now. I don't care what I do. I'll do anything because I don't have any money".

So it was at the end of 2010 that I realized this financial debacle was not ending anytime soon, and that I wanted to write one more book. People needed to go back to class to learn about money all over again. Hence the title The Money Class. And the subtitle of that book is "Learn to create your new American dream". I wanted to give people the ability once again to realize that they can still dream, but it has to be a new American dream that's based in honesty, integrity, and security — a dream that allows you to sleep at night, a dream that is attainable and allows you to stand in your truth. So it was actually a very important book for me to write and for America to read.

JM: If someone could take one major tip from the book, what would it be?

SO: Stand in your truth! This book is made up of nine classes, the second of which is to stand in your truth. You can't build a foundation on lies. You can't build a future if you do not know who you are. You can't become who you are meant to be if you can't tell the truth about who you are, what you have, and everything about your life. The truth is the absolute essence to your success, while lies are the absolute essence to your failures. People were not truthful in terms of what they could afford. The entire economy seemed to be based on lies, deceit, and greed. But we do not need to rehash history, for we all have felt what happened over the past three years. In this book, I leave the lies behind and create new truths. I weave the "stand in your truth" class into the most vital financial areas of your life: retirement, careers, families, and real estate. If you care about your financial life, you had best read this book. It is like no other, and that is the truth.

JM: I want to take a moment to bridge the gap here between health and wealth. You are often quoted as saying that our health and our wealth go hand in hand. Can you explain this statement?

SO: In most cases your health goes down the drain when you have wealth problems. You don't go to a doctor because you don't have the money. You don't eat the right food because you don't have money. You worry all the time because you don't have money. Your blood pressure is high because you don't have money, and on and on. This is why your health must be your priority. You can have all the money in the world. You can be a multi-billionaire, but if you do not have your health it means nothing. Your health is the No. 1 important thing in your life.

JM: Can you share anything specifically about taking care of your financial priorities so you are able to take care of health issues? What should people know about saving for medical emergencies and or health insurance?

SO: I can tell you this: The No. 1 reason for bankruptcy today in America is medical expenses. For this reason, health insurance is really important and each person needs to sit down and understand what they need health insurance for. Ask yourself: Are you someone who needs to go for medical exams all the time? Do you often get sick? Are you on medication? That's a whole different type of coverage versus being someone who is generally healthy, eats well, and doesn't get sick often.

Health insurance can go two ways: You can have more costly health insurance, which will cover every single time you go into the doctor except for a small co-pay, or if money is tight and you're fairly healthy, then you should acquire major medical health insurance, which is a necessity in the event of a catastrophic injury or health emergency.

JM: What about families that have children and can't afford to insure them. How serious an issue is this?

SO: Jillian, there are state programs that will allow you to insure your children for pennies on the dollar. I will get you information on that tonight for you to include.

(And she did. Incredible information. For those of you struggling to insure your children, please check out these resources from the American Academy of Pediatrics.)

JM: Obviously this is a topic that is important to you. What health challenges have you faced, and what do you do personally to stay healthy?

SO: This past year has been incredibly hard on me. I've had a horrific back with herniated discs and problems with my lungs that have kept me up at night for weeks on end. Because of this I've become an expert on all of these topics. I research them myself. I even read the books written by the doctors I have seen. And ultimately, with the power of being informed, I trusted my gut and knew when to listen to the doctors and when not to in order to turn my health around. With patience, time, trial and error, and information I was able to rehabilitate my back and manage my asthma that I have struggled with since childhood.

JM: This all ties back to what you said earlier about being proactive, and standing in your truth to decipher the advice of experts and discern what works for you and what doesn't.

SO: Exactly!

JM: I want to segue now and give people a chance to know the real you — a glimpse into your heart and soul. I think when someone becomes as famous as you have become, there is a certain amount of parody that occurs. Take Kristen Wiig's impersonation of you on SNL (Saturday Night Live), for example. How do you feel about that? What do they get right about you and what do they get wrong?

SO: It's probably one of the greatest compliments that has ever been paid to me. What Kristen gets right about me is that she gets my accents totally and my intonations perfectly. Sometimes when I'm doing my own show, Amy, my producer, will say "What's wrong with you?" because I will have stopped and realized that I was just playing Kristen Wiig playing me. What they get wrong is the money part. Money can be funny and it's entertaining, but they often go more toward the side of me that really isn't me.

JM: When you say the side of you that isn't you, what do you mean?

SO: Well, I'm sorry to say this, but half the jokes they say about me I don't understand. I have to call friends and ask, What does that mean? Why are they always talking about cats? Do you know what that means? What's the cat thing about?

JM: (laughing hysterically) Honestly, I have no idea! I always presumed you knew! I never got that joke about you either!

JM: Here is a question I have always wanted to ask you: You inspire so many. Who inspires you?

SO: Many people inspire me. Today for instance, 600 inner-city kids who attended a talk that I gave inspired me. The kids that went to this school eat every day only because the school feeds them their meal, and to see these kids going for it against all odds, the hope that they had — it made me so bright and so happy, I could barely contain the energy. I get more inspired by seeing everyday people succeed against the odds than anything else in life.

JM: What was the best piece of advice you were ever given and who gave it to you?

SO: My father. We never had much money. My dad has this little deli and at 13 years old I used to work there. He made the biggest corned beef sandwiches — they were huge! People would line up all the way out the door to get them, and yet we still never had any money even though we all worked so hard. So, one day I went into downtown Chicago with some friends and we ended up at another deli where the sandwiches were half the size and twice the price. So I got home and said, "Dad, I have figured out the solution to our money problems!" He said, "All right, tell me." I said, "Just cut down on the size of the sandwich and double your price and we’ll make more money." And he looked at me and he said "Suze, I’d rather make 50 percent of something than 100 percent of nothing." With that, he walked away, and I have never forgotten what he said. To this day, rather than manufacture my own product and take risks with my money to make 100 percent, I am very happy to let other people take the risk and in turn I make 50 percent. I never risk a penny of my own money, and that principle comes from my father saying that to me when I was 13 years old.

JM: Can you reflect on what the happiest moment of your life might be?

SO: I wish I could tell you that there was one. There’s a moment in every single day where I am happier than I was the day before and it doesn’t have to be because something great has happened that day. It’s a feeling that I get — not because of something external — it’s a recognition of how much I am at home with who I am and that I am at one with the world.

JM: Are you kidding me?

SO: It’s true, Jillian. The happiest moment of my life happens once a day.

JM: (emitting a loud jealous sigh) I am not quite at that point yet, friend. Cross your fingers for me? What’s making you happy today?

SO: What’s making me happy today is that I changed the lives of 600 kids. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I changed 600 lives today.

JM: But you’ve been changing lives for years now. Why was today different?

SO: Today I now have faith that the children of America can be touched and changed and that they themselves can touch and change the world, and that gives me more hope than I have had in a long, long time.

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